“Doing nothing is hard to do,” wrote Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust. “It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.”

Solnit’s point is that our modern culture is consumed with productivity. For your activity to be valuable, it must produce—more money, more friends, more health—and so walks must do likewise. If you don’t have a clear purpose and a measureable goal, the thinking goes, then what’s the point? You haven’t done anything.

So Solnit disagreed with the premise. Sometimes you can walk to do nothing.

But she still doesn’t tell me how to do that.

So I Googled it—“being as opposed to doing.” The AI gave me the pop psychology I expected. “Learn to be present in the moment, accept yourself as you are, find fulfillment from within rather than constantly striving to achieve goals through activity.”

I guess that’s all good, but I found more help in poetry and theology.

Theology first—the Apostle Paul said that the Gospel is more about receiving a gift than keeping a set of rules (Romans 4, Ephesians 2). Do so, he said, and you become someone different (“being” rather than “doing”).

The Romantic poets had the same approach to nature (which they accessed through walking). In “Tables Turned” William Wordsworth said we should stop with the study of books and science (doing) and “let nature be your teacher.”

“Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.”

A heart that watches and receives—that’s receiving the gift—that’s “being not doing”—something I plan to try on my next walk.

*Tomorrow’s blog is about walking to get lost.